MIDI sounds are terrible now : Othor Games

» Wed Nov 30, 2011 2:32 pm

EDIT: This problem was fixed with a simple computer restart. I haven't been able to determine what caused it to begin with. I ran dosbox, ran Daggerfall, even exited and ran Daggerfall setup and changed options after the restart. It all sounds fine.

Some times I want to smack this computer upside the head!

And like I predicted, my uploads sound fine now. You can't hear the terrible quality I heard.

Spoiler

MIDI sounds when not in Dosbox are pretty lousy for me all of a sudden. I don't know why. I recently downloaded and installed Daggerfall, and fired up my old Daggerfall jukebox, and the difference between the two is astounding. Ingame in dosbox everything sounds pretty good; not quite what it was on my old machine but pretty good. Daggerfall jukebox though is terrible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhOL_eY6A8g is what it should be sounding like.

http://www.zshare.net/audio/91434134817365e7/ is what it sounds like when I extract it.

It used to sound good, like the youtube video. I have no idea what happened. All my audigy 4 settings are correct.

Here's another example

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vititmYVi0s

http://www.zshare.net/audio/914345467ede5d02/

There's a chance you aren't hearing the lousy quality I'm hearing in the uploads. It doesn't sound bad in dosbox, and yet even in dosbox it doesn't quite have the quality of those youtube videos.

Daggerfall jukebox used to work great. Used to get pretty good quality sound from the MIDI files. Either something happened after installing dosbox .74 and Daggerfall the other day, or it's been messed up a long time and I never knew it because I removed the old harddrive with my old Daggerfall installation and never listened to MIDI files. Again, all my sound card settings seem correct.

» Wed Nov 30, 2011 5:43 am

MIDIs are simply text instructions for your sound card, which uses its own (or a specified) wavetable to play the music. This is why they will sound different on different machines, or through different software. I haven't used Dosbox much at all, but I'm pretty sure it uses some type of OPL2 emulation by default.

» Wed Nov 30, 2011 1:17 am

It's fixed. I restarted the computer and all is well. Why I had to restart it I have no idea. I don't know what fouled it up to begin with. Some time in between installing (or just downloading) dosbox .74, installing Daggerfall, and playing it, MIDI sound quality outside dosbox became all screwed up, and apparently no matter what I tried to change in my sound card options, only a restart worked.

In my time-tested tradition, I fixed my problem just a few short minutes after posting and asking for help, and that's after a while of trying to research the problem online with no success (I guess because it's not a problem others have, and is easily fixable).